I have written approximately 67 posts in my head since my last post, but life has intervened.
Since the day of Jimmy's surgery on September 24, we have had 6 days WITHOUT overnight company in the house, which has been tons of fun but without a housekeeper, there's been a lot of sheet-washing and bathroom-cleaning and floor-vacuuming by yours truly.
I also officially started my job on October 1, right in the middle of all the company. Between the company, lack of housekeeper, life, following online the horrible flooding in SC, etc, I just can't seem to find my groove with work. The work itself has been very interesting to date and I'm loving it, but I can't figure out when to do my 5 hours a day or, because I'm obsessive-compulsive and want to do the best job ever, how to turn the computer off after I put in my 5 hours a day. Yesterday was the first time where I felt like I had any balance in the schedule - I went to my Pilates class in the morning and the beach for a couple hours with our house guests, and then I came home to work while they went out. That is how I want my days to be on a regular basis.
Jimmy's shoulder is coming along. The surgeon says the surgery was a success. He put in two screws to pull the tears back together and scraped out some gunk. Jimmy's now doing physical therapy twice a week with a wonderful therapist. Jimmy thought he'd be back to normal in 2 months, so he was disheartened when the therapist told him it would be more like 4 months. But really, what's 4 months in the grand scheme of things?
Aside from work and company, we've been getting out and about and meeting interesting people over the last couple weeks. We hosted another official cocktail that was a ton of fun, and I hosted a coffee for the 7th grade parents where I got to meet some other moms. There's always some other country's national day party, which are fun because there's a small group of people that we see at every single one of those - other diplomats and government officials - which makes Rio feel like a small town in some respects, I attended a friend's book launch, we went to the American movie night at the Rio Film Festival where we saw Me, Earl and the Dying Girl (I should have brought more Kleenex), we attended a lunch with the consular corps to send off another consul general (the lunch was on the 30th floor of this hotel and the view was INCREDIBLE), and we went to the opening of a very cool Maori exhibition hosted by the Ambassador of New Zealand (from which we took home the most delicious chocolate and peanut bars I've ever eaten). And that's just the stuff I've done. Jimmy is out at night more than I am. I don't know if this pace is sustainable long-term, but we're enjoying it while we can manage it.
Mac continues to thrive here. He loves school, he's made a lot of friends and he made the JV basketball team, which means in addition to regular games here in town, he'll get to go to a tournament outside of Sao Paulo for a few days at the end of October. Then during the second week of November, he goes on a 7th grade 5-day class trip to a very cool colonial city about 6 hours from Rio. They have all sorts of fun and educational things planned for the week and I'm a little jealous that they don't want/need parents to go as chaperons. He's off today and tomorrow from school, so he's lazing around this morning until 11, when he's been invited to the Jockey Club for a friend's birthday lunch, swim and soccer. Again, I wish he was at the age where he needed a chaperon because I'd love to see inside the Jockey Club. But alas, the friend's driver is picking him up along with the other friend who was invited (the "real" birthday party is next weekend; this is just a get-together with a couple friends on the actual birthday.)
This weekend the Orlando Magic are in town to play a local sports club's basketball team. Jimmy and I are attending two cocktail parties tomorrow night where reportedly we'll get to meet players of the Magic and then the three of us will attend the game on Saturday night. I never thought I'd get to meet professional basketball players so that's kind of cool. I will definitely post photos if I get to take any without being obnoxious.
We are loving the house. I cannot stress to you enough how very much we love the house. It's big and airy and bright and uncluttered. I need to remember to send the State Department's interior designer an email to thank her for the work she did on the house because it really is perfect in my opinion. I told Jimmy that if and when we ever build our dream house, I would like to track her down and hire her to decorate it because I like her style so much.
The house is big, though, and not airtight so without regular cleaning, dust builds up quickly. Which has just about driven my obsessive-compulsive self crazy. Finally ,when I was on the brink of crazy, I convinced the lady who was helping me one day a week to give up her other jobs to come to us for full-time work, five days a week. It's really to her advantage, because she'll get all sorts of benefits like social security, health insurance, vacation, transportation and food allowances, etc, that she doesn't get doing lots of day jobs. I'm happy to report that she started full-time yesterday. Already I feel like I've stepped away from the edge of crazy.
And the biggest, best house news is that we've hired a chef. I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am we've finally found someone AND that the someone we found seems so incredibly amazing. She lived and went to culinary school for 3 years in Italy. Did you hear me? Italy. My most favorite food on the planet is Italian so the next time you see me, I may weigh 292 pounds because of excessive lasagna consumption. She also likes to cook Asian, Mediterranean and food from the Northeast of Brazil, which means she can cook spicy food which is not so prevalent in other parts of Brazil. AND she makes homemade jams. Are you kidding me? We're going to have homemade jams with breakfast every day. I may weigh 417 pounds the next time you see me. She wants to leave restaurant life to achieve better work-life balance. YES! Oh boy, am I happy. Her background check is in progress but I've asked/begged/promised food if they'll expedite it because I want, no, NEED, her to start sooner rather than later.
So that's about it from Casa Story. We hope you're all well, wherever you're reading this from!
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